The New Democracy Enters the Arena

The spirit of the new order soon had a pronounced effect on the
machinery of government and the practice of politics. The enfranchised
electors were not long in demanding for themselves a larger share in
administration.

The Spoils System and Rotation in Office.—First of all they wanted
office for themselves, regardless of their fitness. They therefore
extended the system of rewarding party workers with government
positions—a system early established in several states, notably New
York and Pennsylvania. Closely connected with it was the practice of
fixing short terms for officers and making frequent changes in
personnel. “Long continuance in office,” explained a champion of this
idea in Pennsylvania in 1837, “unfits a man for the discharge of its
duties, by rendering him arbitrary and aristocratic, and tends to beget,
first life office, and then hereditary office, which leads to the
destruction of free government.” The solution offered was the historic
doctrine of “rotation in office.” At the same time the principle of
popular election was extended to an increasing number of officials who
had once been appointed either by the governor or the legislature. Even
geologists, veterinarians, surveyors, and other technical officers were
declared elective on the theory that their appointment “smacked of
monarchy.”

Popular Election of Presidential Electors.—In a short time the spirit
of democracy, while playing havoc with the old order in state
government, made its way upward into the federal system. The framers of
the Constitution, bewildered by many proposals and unable to agree on
any single plan, had committed the choice of presidential electors to
the discretion of the state legislatures. The legislatures, in turn,
greedy of power, early adopted the practice of choosing the electors
themselves; but they did not enjoy it long undisturbed. Democracy,
thundering at their doors, demanded that they surrender the privilege to
the people. Reluctantly they yielded, sometimes granting popular
election and then withdrawing it. The drift was inevitable, and the
climax came with the advent of Jacksonian democracy. In 1824, Vermont,
New York, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, though some
had experimented with popular election, still left the choice of
electors with the legislature. Eight years later South Carolina alone
held to the old practice. Popular election had become the final word.
The fanciful idea of an electoral college of “good and wise men,”
selected without passion or partisanship by state legislatures acting as
deliberative bodies, was exploded for all time; the election of the
nation’s chief magistrate was committed to the tempestuous methods of
democracy.

The Nominating Convention.—As the suffrage was widened and the
popular choice of presidential electors extended, there arose a violent
protest against the methods used by the political parties in nominating
candidates. After the retirement of Washington, both the Republicans and
the Federalists found it necessary to agree upon their favorites before
the election, and they adopted a colonial device—the pre-election
caucus. The Federalist members of Congress held a conference and
selected their candidate, and the Republicans followed the example. In
a short time the practice of nominating by a “congressional caucus”
became a recognized institution. The election still remained with the
people; but the power of picking candidates for their approval passed
into the hands of a small body of Senators and Representatives.

A reaction against this was unavoidable. To friends of “the plain
people,” like Andrew Jackson, it was intolerable, all the more so
because the caucus never favored him with the nomination. More
conservative men also found grave objections to it. They pointed out
that, whereas the Constitution intended the President to be an
independent officer, he had now fallen under the control of a caucus of
congressmen. The supremacy of the legislative branch had been obtained
by an extra-legal political device. To such objections were added
practical considerations. In 1824, when personal rivalry had taken the
place of party conflicts, the congressional caucus selected as the
candidate, William H. Crawford, of Georgia, a man of distinction but no
great popularity, passing by such an obvious hero as General Jackson.
The followers of the General were enraged and demanded nothing short of
the death of “King Caucus.” Their clamor was effective. Under their
attacks, the caucus came to an ignominious end.

In place of it there arose in 1831 a new device, the national nominating
convention, composed of delegates elected by party voters for the sole
purpose of nominating candidates. Senators and Representatives were
still prominent in the party councils, but they were swamped by hundreds
of delegates “fresh from the people,” as Jackson was wont to say. In
fact, each convention was made up mainly of office holders and office
seekers, and the new institution was soon denounced as vigorously as
King Caucus had been, particularly by statesmen who failed to obtain a
nomination. Still it grew in strength and by 1840 was firmly
established.

The End of the Old Generation.—In the election of 1824, the
representatives of the “aristocracy” made their last successful stand.
Until then the leadership by men of “wealth and talents” had been
undisputed. There had been five Presidents—Washington, John Adams,
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—all Eastern men brought up in prosperous
families with the advantages of culture which come from leisure and the
possession of life’s refinements. None of them had ever been compelled
to work with his hands for a livelihood. Four of them had been
slaveholders. Jefferson was a philosopher, learned in natural science, a
master of foreign languages, a gentleman of dignity and grace of manner,
notwithstanding his studied simplicity. Madison, it was said, was armed
“with all the culture of his century.” Monroe was a graduate of William
and Mary, a gentleman of the old school. Jefferson and his three
successors called themselves Republicans and professed a genuine faith
in the people but they were not “of the people” themselves; they were
not sons of the soil or the workshop. They were all men of “the grand
old order of society” who gave finish and style even to popular
government.

Monroe was the last of the Presidents belonging to the heroic epoch of
the Revolution. He had served in the war for independence, in the
Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and in official capacity
after the adoption of the Constitution. In short, he was of the age that
had wrought American independence and set the government afloat. With
his passing, leadership went to a new generation; but his successor,
John Quincy Adams, formed a bridge between the old and the new in that
he combined a high degree of culture with democratic sympathies.
Washington had died in 1799, preceded but a few months by Patrick Henry
and followed in four years by Samuel Adams. Hamilton had been killed in
a duel with Burr in 1804. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were yet alive
in 1824 but they were soon to pass from the scene, reconciled at last,
full of years and honors. Madison was in dignified retirement, destined
to live long enough to protest against the doctrine of nullification
proclaimed by South Carolina before death carried him away at the ripe
old age of eighty-five.

The Election of John Quincy Adams (1824).—The campaign of 1824 marked
the end of the “era of good feeling” inaugurated by the collapse of the
Federalist party after the election of 1816. There were four leading
candidates, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and W.H.
Crawford. The result of the election was a division of the electoral
votes into four parts and no one received a majority. Under the
Constitution, therefore, the selection of President passed to the House
of Representatives. Clay, who stood at the bottom of the poll, threw his
weight to Adams and assured his triumph, much to the chagrin of
Jackson’s friends. They thought, with a certain justification, that
inasmuch as the hero of New Orleans had received the largest electoral
vote, the House was morally bound to accept the popular judgment and
make him President. Jackson shook hands cordially with Adams on the day
of the inauguration, but never forgave him for being elected.

While Adams called himself a Republican in politics and often spoke of
“the rule of the people,” he was regarded by Jackson’s followers as “an
aristocrat.” He was not a son of the soil. Neither was he acquainted at
first hand with the labor of farmers and mechanics. He had been educated
at Harvard and in Europe. Like his illustrious father, John Adams, he
was a stern and reserved man, little given to seeking popularity.
Moreover, he was from the East and the frontiersmen of the West regarded
him as a man “born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Jackson’s
supporters especially disliked him because they thought their hero
entitled to the presidency. Their anger was deepened when Adams
appointed Clay to the office of Secretary of State; and they set up a
cry that there had been a “deal” by which Clay had helped to elect Adams
to get office for himself.

Though Adams conducted his administration with great dignity and in a
fine spirit of public service, he was unable to overcome the opposition
which he encountered on his election to office or to win popularity in
the West and South. On the contrary, by advocating government assistance
in building roads and canals and public grants in aid of education,
arts, and sciences, he ran counter to the current which had set in
against appropriations of federal funds for internal improvements. By
signing the Tariff Bill of 1828, soon known as the “Tariff of
Abominations,” he made new enemies without adding to his friends in New
York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio where he sorely needed them. Handicapped by
the false charge that he had been a party to a “corrupt bargain” with
Clay to secure his first election; attacked for his advocacy of a high
protective tariff; charged with favoring an “aristocracy of
office-holders” in Washington on account of his refusal to discharge
government clerks by the wholesale, Adams was retired from the White
House after he had served four years.

Andrew Jackson

The Triumph of Jackson in 1828.—Probably no candidate for the
presidency ever had such passionate popular support as Andrew Jackson
had in 1828. He was truly a man of the people. Born of poor parents in
the upland region of South Carolina, schooled in poverty and adversity,
without the advantages of education or the refinements of cultivated
leisure, he seemed the embodiment of the spirit of the new American
democracy. Early in his youth he had gone into the frontier of Tennessee
where he soon won a name as a fearless and intrepid Indian fighter. On
the march and in camp, he endeared himself to his men by sharing their
hardships, sleeping on the ground with them, and eating parched corn
when nothing better could be found for the privates. From local
prominence he sprang into national fame by his exploit at the battle of
New Orleans. His reputation as a military hero was enhanced by the
feeling that he had been a martyr to political treachery in 1824. The
farmers of the West and South claimed him as their own. The mechanics of
the Eastern cities, newly enfranchised, also looked upon him as their
friend. Though his views on the tariff, internal improvements, and other
issues before the country were either vague or unknown, he was readily
elected President.

The returns of the electoral vote in 1828 revealed the sources of
Jackson’s power. In New England, he received but one ballot, from
Maine; he had a majority of the electors in New York and all of them in
Pennsylvania; and he carried every state south of Maryland and beyond
the Appalachians. Adams did not get a single electoral vote in the South
and West. The prophecy of the Hartford convention had been fulfilled.

When Jackson took the oath of office on March 4, 1829, the government of
the United States entered into a new era. Until this time the
inauguration of a President—even that of Jefferson, the apostle of
simplicity—had brought no rude shock to the course of affairs at the
capital. Hitherto the installation of a President meant that an
old-fashioned gentleman, accompanied by a few servants, had driven to
the White House in his own coach, taken the oath with quiet dignity,
appointed a few new men to the higher posts, continued in office the
long list of regular civil employees, and begun his administration with
respectable decorum. Jackson changed all this. When he was inaugurated,
men and women journeyed hundreds of miles to witness the ceremony. Great
throngs pressed into the White House, “upset the bowls of punch, broke
the glasses, and stood with their muddy boots on the satin-covered
chairs to see the people’s President.” If Jefferson’s inauguration was,
as he called it, the “great revolution,” Jackson’s inauguration was a
cataclysm.